[S-110]

Dunno if it is possible, but the more I look at this game and the folks who love it the more I wonder if there is much that cannot be accomplished.

The questions are:

1  Is it possible to set up a campaign so that if a player is able to disable an enemy fighter and have it captured, would they be able to have it continue as a part of their ship "stash" for the rest of the campaign?

2  Now the biggie:  How can this be done?  

I've only had the game for a short time so I've yet to become very familiar with what the engine is capable of.

[karajorma]

Yep It's pretty simple.

When you make the campaign file make sure that the ship is not one the player can fly at the start of the campaign.

In the mission itself have the player disable the ship and then change it's IFF to friendly. Have a support ship come in and carry it off.
Once the support ship has left (i.e fighter is captured) use the allow-ship SEXP on the same event to make the ship appear in future missions. Allow-ship can`t be selected from the right click menu (unless you`re using the SCP version) so you`ll have to type it in.
 In this way the ship will only be available if the player captures it. If it gets away later missions won`t let you fly the ship

[S-110]

I see what you are saying - something like the Dragon capture mission from the fs1 port.  What I was thinking about was something more on the lines of being able to have a salvage type of deal, where if you capture a few of the same type fighters in a mission you would have that many availiable in future loadout screens to equip your wing with in any future missions.  Perhaps limiting the player to having availiable only the captured ships in the load out screen, instead of needing to do it as a one time enable deal.

[StratComm]

For the most part, the campaign structure is not that dynamic.  You could perhaps fake it comehow, but that'd be extremely tough if its possible at all.

[karajorma]

It wouldn`t be possible to do it that way using the standard FRED2 because there is no way to check what happens if give a wing man the captured fighter. If you lose wingmen there is no way to check what fighter they were in when they got themselves blown up.

What you could do is limit the special ship to Alpha 1. After all if only Alpha 1 flys the ship he can`t of gotten it destroyed This would mean that you would have to lock the rest of alpha, beta and gamma wings.

If you only wanted to have the number of ships captured affect the NEXT mission that could be very easily achieved by using several different versions of the mission which differ only in the number of the special fighters available. But unless you locked alpha, beta and gamma wings you'd have no way of telling how many of the special ships were destroyed.

Hmmm. Gives me some ideas for suggestions to make to the Source Code Project people.

[Black Wolf]

What you're suggesting isn't impossible, just wildly difficult. It would involve branching the campaign with the only changes in each branch being the number of captured ships available. Of course, if you wanted a ten mission campaign with each possible course mapped out you could have anywhere from a hundred to several thousand slightly varied missions, but I guess it's up to you.

If you want my opinion though, do what karajorma suggested, and just say that the captured fighters are reverse engineered or something, or limit the number of captures you can make to one, and limit the potyential availablility of the fighter to a single one (for Alpha 1).

[S-110]

Hmm, pretty much agree, in present form would be difficult.  I guess I miss the MW2 Mercs style of salvage - defeat an opponent and take his ride (or what's left of it).  

Now since the source code has been released how hard is it to impliment as opposed to multiple missions (obviously a tad unweildly)?  Would definitely increase the flexibility allowed in creating a campaign.

[Anaz]

Actually, in MW2, the salvage was pre-scripted. It is allways the same. (i.e. you still have to blow something up to salvage it, but it allways produces the same salvage)

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by S-110
Hmm, pretty much agree, in present form would be difficult.  I guess I miss the MW2 Mercs style of salvage - defeat an opponent and take his ride (or what's left of it).  

Now since the source code has been released how hard is it to impliment as opposed to multiple missions (obviously a tad unweildly)?  Would definitely increase the flexibility allowed in creating a campaign.

Nothing is impossible.  But don't hold your breath.

[S-110]

Actually, in MW2, the salvage was pre-scripted. It is allways the same. (i.e. you still have to blow something up to salvage it, but it allways produces the same salvage)

It did vary to an extent, depending on how badly you shot up the savaged machine, also there was a patch released that made the salvage a more dynamic affair - did seem to work that way after I patched it.  

Earth Seige 2 also had that type of dynamic salvage as well, though it was concerned only with ammount of weapons andtype, and how many tons of scrap you got from a salvaged herc.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Nothing is impossible.  But don't hold your breath.

Try striking a match on a bar of soap

[S-110]

Try striking a match on a bar of soap

Can be done - haveta use really old dry pumice soap though...

[CP5670]

This actually should be pretty easy to do as long as you are only doing it for a single ship/pilot; try what karajorma said. Anything more than that I don't think is possible at the moment, since there is no event operator that allows one to change the number of available ships/weapons in the pool, just whether or not they exist there at all. Of course, you could do the branching thing that BW was talking about, but that is a rather messy way of doing it.

Actually, on that note, how many of the "allowed" ships/weapons do these operators put into the available pool by default?

[Flaser]

Check this thread:
Capture and keep?
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,13974.0.html
It deals with the same problem